Echo
by Saberhagens
Summary: It is said some lives are linked across time, connected by an ancient calling that echoes through the ages - destiny, to which Dastan and Tamina are a testament.


_Summary: It is said some lives are linked across time, connected by an ancient calling that echoes through the ages - destiny, to which Dastan and Tamina are a testament._

_This one-shot bears the theme of reincarnation. Please read, review and enjoy._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing._

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**ECHO**

* * *

He stood there, staring at her across the crowded, smoky tavern, as if she were the only other person there. Though they said nothing, it was the type of nothing that meant everything. But what? It was there - he was sure, a history waiting to swell in his heart and a name tied to it, ready to roll off his tongue. He knows it, it's hers. He knows it as well as he knows his own.

And when her dark eyes meet his across the room, fear flashes there. She looks suddenly, irrationally terrified. Of him. Of Dastan and it tears him apart.

Then a not so particular drunkard moves between them, demanding his attention and stealing it away from her in his distraction, in which she slips away. He shall never see her again, not in this life: but every day and night thereafter, for years and years to follow, he remembers her face in that smoky tavern.

Beautiful and terrified and someone he knows he could have loved, if given half the chance. She is the only one he could ever love.

…

In this life, in this time, they are closer than they ought to be. They see each other every day; grow up alongside one another, sharing far more than the time of day - sharing blood.

He longs for her the way he shouldn't but the way she knows he will, compelling her to maintain the distance. Something in her tells them _not yet, not yet. _Here is the person you have been waiting for and you cannot have him. Not yet.

…

Tamina catches the most fleeting of glimpses at first. She is walking in the opposite direction, facing toward him when he looks up from the path. Their eyes meet and their mouths begin to form into that subtle half-smile strangers exchange during an accidental collision of gazes. Then she really sees him, and part of her thinks, _oh, there you are._

Except that her heart is rather inclined to bellow _where have you been and why are you not mine._

She opens her mouth to say something, anything that might ask him if he had heard it, felt it. But he looks terribly frightened - as though she threatened to push him over the edge of a cliff and follow him over only to let herself fall from his desperate grasp.

He backs away slightly, readying himself to flee from her.

But something - perhaps the words of her heart - kept him there before her, "I think I love you." he manages through the lump in his throat.

"I think I love you, too." she replies, her face a mask she seems accustomed to wearing, "Run." the word is voiced in a mere whisper that he hears it anyway.

And he runs like he is used to following her orders.

…

Dastan reads a name in the corner of a second-hand book and he wonders, "Who are you?" but he feels he already knows. It was the only name his heart could recognise.

She is the most important thing he'll ever have, though, in this life they have never laid eyes on each other.

The book in his hands is about a mighty empire past, warlords, and of course, a hero on a quest to clear his name. Tamina has left occasional notes on the thoroughly read pages, of the hero's frequently reckless stupidity, the ridiculous love interest and the importance of the story's sacred relic gifted to humanity by the deities.

"Our story will be different." Dastan breathes into the book's spine as if it were the very woman to whom it once belonged, "I would never let you go. I won't ever let you go."

He doesn't know why he makes the promise, but it seems as though he hadn't at first kept it.

…

In another life, they find, they are Prince and Princess once more. He has nobility to gain and she has a dagger to protect. They meet upon the siege of Alamut like before, and once again following the adventure that the dagger erased from all but his mind.

He stands before her throne, beside his brother Garsiv, while the eldest Tus offers his penance for mindlessly attacking her city under his Uncle Nizam's treachery.

"It would be to our mutual advantage that our nations be joined by a bond stronger than friendship." he explains and Dastan prepares himself to propose to his Princess.

"Marriage." Tus continues, turning back to his brothers and smiling softly before returning his gaze to Tamina, "Your marriage to Persia's future king."

The words hit Dastan as suddenly as she had slashed his chest with the Scimitar bound to Aksh's saddle.

_Not yet, _the voice told him and he almost reached into his belt to find the cursed knife, ready to pierce his chest with it's blade - prematurely ending this particular life he knew he could not endure.

Alas, his hands stilled and he managed to keep them from her throughout the long years she was married to his brother.

It was only when he had taken a fatal wound in battle with the warlord Kosh did he speak to her in this life, "Someday." his spirit says, watching the love of his many lives shed a tear over his body. She turns to his loyal friend Bis, and she remembers the story of the time that never was even as it is told, because she already knows. She has always known.

…

"Soon." says both of them in unison, and the woman and man exchanged confused looks, silently wondering why they spoke and what it meant.

"I feel like I know you." the blue-eyed man confesses as he lets himself become captivated by the depth in her obscenely dark eyes.

The woman steps backwards, "I think that's why I must leave." and so she does.

…

In a time between lives, following the conclusion of one and the beginning of another, Dastan meets the Gods Tamina once worshiped, "I'm tired." he says, defeated and on his knees, "I cannot do it again."

"You have said so before." the voice with no face answered.

"Haven't we endured enough to suffice?" Dastan argued, knowing full well he could not claim victory against this foe.

They had a destiny, he and Tamina, one that could not be fulfilled until they met in that life where the fates were ever in their favour.

After a moment of silence, the voice spoke again through the darkness, perhaps more merciful than it might've been, "The last is always the hardest."

…

The last is always the hardest, because they are able to freely love each other. They are inseparable.

Then something changes, as It always does. They hurt each other - many times and in lots of different ways; stomping on each other's feelings and beliefs until they are both as equally as resentful, and bruised, and still very much in love.

And then the last straw is strung: the final betrayal. Tamina walks away, feeling her heart tear open and out of her chest, knowing he does the same behind her. In this life, like every other, they never love another. In this life, it is by choice, for hate clouds their minds and hearts.

The day arrived, as did the accident: one which she could have easily avoided, but she had been fed up of living anyway.

The gods are there, observing as the lovers meet, truly and for the first time in countless lives. They remember then - first each other; then that first life in the desert and lastly the cruelty of the very plan the Gods made for them.

"You have a choice to make." the voice reminded them in that world between others.

Dastan and Tamina's eyes meet, "Life?" he suggests.

"Again?" and she's smiling brightly.

He takes her hand in his own, "We'll do it right this time." he decides.

…

After their life is spent and destiny fulfilled, they are old, and in their bed together, Dastan holds Tamina at the end.

"All those lives." Dastan recounts, "Was it really worth it?" he asks her, hoping for a certain answer.

"Always." Tamina answers truthfully.

Before death comes to claim them, they hear those cruel but merciful Gods wonder, Throughout those many lives apart, was this one together everything they never realised they had been wishing for?

"And more." they agree.

**The End**


End file.
